Rolling thunder: Looking back at Salem’s old stagecoaches

Saturday

Jan 25, 2014 at 11:26 AMJan 25, 2014 at 11:26 AM

By John GoffPreservation Perspective

Recently I learned of Osgood Bradley, reportedly the first to manufacture passenger railroad cars in the United States. Born in Andover in 1800, Osgood was the son of Thomas O. and Mehitable C. Bradley. He was one of four children.According to an 1884 clerk’s note, Bradley (1800-1884) was born on Jan. 15, 1800. Andover, where he first lived, lies some 15 miles northwest of Salem, near Route 114. That road was conceived to be a high-speed turnpike connecting Salem with Lawrence on the Merrimack River.In that stagecoach era, teams of mighty, muscular horses were regularly driven by coach drivers to pull finely crafted, painted wooden stagecoaches. As late as 1836, Salem maintained speedy stagecoach connections with Gloucester, Haverhill, Lowell, Ipswich, Lynn, Marblehead and Boston. Procurers of stagecoach horses, stagecoach agents, stagecoach drivers and coach-makers all resided in Salem.Salem exerted a pull upon young Bradley. He is thought to have relocated here to apprentice as a coachbuilder about 1815. Records are scant from that period, but in 1836, significant Salem coach and carriage manufacturers included Benjamin Bray, Stephen Daniels and Henry McIntyre. Craftsmen in wood and iron, Salem’s coach and carriage manufacturers often possessed additional skills as wheelwrights and blacksmiths.One contemporary of Bradley was Andover’s Joseph S. Abbot (1804-1877). A noted stagecoach body builder, Abbot achieved distinction in Salem by the 1820s, and then developed new coach companies in and around Concord, N.H. He produced the famed Concord Coach.During the 1830s, Salem and other cities began developing steam railroads. Demand was high for quality new cars that could be evolved from wooden stagecoaches. Bradley had moved west to ply his craft. He likely first moved to Framingham and then to Worcester by 1822. Mid-Continent Railway Museum maintains: "[Bradley] opened his own shop (in Worcester), building coaches, carriages and wagons in a large two-story wooden building … In 1826, he began building coaches for the large stage line operators in New York and New England and reportedly built the majority of those used in that area." In 1915, Eleanor Bradley Peters confirmed "(Osgood) was the maker of a large proportion of the stage-coaches running early in the nineteenth century."Between 1833 and 1835, Bradley started constructing railroad cars. By 1845, he had a railroad car manufacturing business called Bradley & Rice. It sold one of its new eight-wheel passenger cars to the Boston and Lowell Railroad in 1845 for $1,800. Yet by 1849, Rice was out and Bradley continued with the Osgood Bradley Car Company.Some have noted: "[Bradley’s] company was founded in 1822 to manufacture stagecoaches and sleighs. The company's first railway passenger cars were built for the Boston and Worcester Railroad in 1835. During the … Civil War, the company produced gun carriages for the Union Army."Bradley himself explained in 1849: "(We) … manufactur[e] … Railroad Cars of every description. .. (Our) Cars … have been and now are running on most of the New England and several of the New York and Southern roads." Bradley advertised that he produced "Passenger, Freight, Baggage, Dumping and Hand Cars, (also rail-based) Snow-Plows" in his versatile Worcester works.Bradley’s company crafted railroad and trolley cars for more than a century. In 1823, the car-builder married Fannie Sanger of Framingham, and the couple raised seven children. Company management eventually shifted to include their son Henry Osgood Bradley (1828-1901) and Henry’s son John E. Bradley (1860-1928). From 1915 to 1916, Charles Turner of the Bradley company also secured a patent for a special trolley window type to allow open summer cars to be converted seasonally to closed cars.Stylish Bradley trolleys and train cars clickety-clacked across America’s railroad tracks. Some later became recycled as distinctive diners. Today, various beautiful Bradley cars, some with mahogany interiors, are preserved by museums like the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine; the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in Wisconsin; the Branford Trolley Museum in East Haven, Conn., the Railroad Museum of New England in Thomaston, Conn; and the Connecticut Trolley Museum in East Windsor. The last maintains a wonderful 1908 Osgood Bradley dining car from the New York, New Haven & Hartford rail system that it rents out for functions. A 1929 Osgood Bradley "Electromobile" trolley also awaits restoration in Scranton, Penn.Prized by railroad owners and the public at large, Osgood Bradley cars connect us with Salem’s distant past as a stagecoach center. They also remind us of the aspirations, accomplishments and integrity of the Essex County native Osgood Bradley.